Humanverse

Baby names of 1990

Jessica and Michael topped the lists in 1990, out of 3,952,585 births recorded across 22,686 different names. That is 2.8% more than the 1989 files hold. About 3.8 million of them are alive today.

← 1989 All years 1991 →

Girls

#NameBirths
1Jessica46,486
2Ashley45,561
3Brittany36,536
4Amanda34,413
5Samantha25,868
6Sarah25,824
7Stephanie24,864
8Jennifer22,236
9Elizabeth20,750
10Lauren20,506
11Megan20,259
12Emily19,370
13Nicole17,954
14Kayla17,538
15Amber15,866
16Rachel15,710
17Courtney15,380
18Danielle14,339
19Heather14,220
20Melissa14,000
21Rebecca13,677
22Michelle13,425
23Tiffany13,160
24Chelsea12,785
25Christina11,927

All 200 girls’ names of 1990 (15,234 recorded)

Boys

#NameBirths
1Michael65,321
2Christopher52,362
3Matthew44,826
4Joshua43,237
5Daniel33,830
6David33,748
7Andrew33,673
8James32,359
9Justin30,649
10Joseph30,137
11Ryan29,263
12John29,089
13Robert28,886
14Nicholas27,913
15Anthony25,088
16William24,906
17Jonathan24,077
18Kyle22,710
19Brandon22,163
20Jacob22,022
21Tyler20,646
22Zachary20,430
23Kevin20,413
24Eric19,430
25Steven18,764

All 200 boys’ names of 1990 (9,493 recorded)

Biggest climbers, girls

Names that gained the most ground on 1989:

Skyler is here because the girls’ file records it: the SSA publishes every name given to five or more babies of one sex, and a rank is a position within that list. It is not a claim about whose name it is.

Biggest climbers, boys

Names that gained the most ground on 1989:

First recorded in 1990, girls

Names the SSA had never published before 1990:

First recorded in 1990, boys

Names the SSA had never published before 1990:

Isamar is here because the boys’ file records it: the SSA publishes every name given to five or more babies of one sex, and a rank is a position within that list. It is not a claim about whose name it is.

Try it on yourself

Source: US Social Security Administration national baby-name files. Names given to fewer than five babies in a year are not published, so the totals here run below the true number of births. How far below is not the same in every year: the files hold 201,484 births for 1880 and 3,315,343 for 2025, so a change from one year to the next in the early decades is partly a change in what the record covers.